Notable Quotables - 06/14/1999

Published: 6/14/1999 12:00 AM ET

Dan Rather at Hillary's Heel

"Once a political lightning rod,
today she is political lightning. A crowd-pleaser and first-class fundraiser,
a person under enormous pressure to step into the arena. This time on her
own....Polls show she is one of the most admired women in America. But even
after seven years in the spotlight, she remains a riddle for many people. It's
hard to know what keeps her going through marital problems made public,
political fights turned ugly, through triumphs, disasters and always the
demands of her work. Tonight we get some answers about how she does it from
the only person in the world who really knows."- Dan Rather on Hillary Clinton
in his May 26 60 Minutes II interview.

"The agenda she lays out seems downright old-fashioned. She sees her work
as focusing on children and families and the unique problems they face
today."

"We've talked about the
possibility of you running for the Senate. You've said that you're obviously
interested in it. What are the possibilities that one day, some day you'll run
for President?"

"You now have a chance to
reflect a little. Of all the allegations, accusations, charges made, what do
you consider to be the most unfair attack?"- Rather's observations and questions,
same show.

The Phantom Red Menace

"The Cox Report says China
uncovered the secrets of seven U.S. nuclear warheads, but the intelligence
evidence is unclear. It may be as low as four, two of which are obsolete.
Amidst all the voices raised in alarm there is a bottom line: Unlike many of
the things in the Cox Report there's no argument here. Number of strategic
nuclear weapons? U.S.: six thousand, China: less than two dozen."- Eric Engberg's "Reality
Check," May 27 CBS Evening News.

"The rollout to this rivaled The Phantom Menace, with Chris Cox in
the role of Luke Skywalker. But the facts don't bear up. First of all, this
notion of Richard Shelby yelling for Janet Reno's head you know, Sandy
Berger was briefed. So was Richard Shelby....There is no evidence they are
building anything; they are deploying anything. It will take them at least ten
years to do anything. This is hysteria to try to create a new Red
Menace."- Newsweek's Eleanor
Clift on the May 29 McLaughlin Group.

Hitting Clinton from Left on Guns

Charles Gibson:"When you
went to Littleton, a friend of yours, who supports you on gun control, said to
me in the last 48 hours, the President, because as he said Littleton has
seared the national conscience, the President had a chance to roar on gun
control and he meowed, and that was a friend of yours. There are very basic
measures that could be taken that people agree on. We register every
automobile in America. We don't register guns. That's a step that would make a
difference."

Charles Gibson: "But let
me come back to you on that, the polls, I agree on that, the polls have shown
that this country would accept registration of firearms and yet we don't do
that and we're not fighting about regulation of guns. We regulate every other
consumer product out there."Bill Clinton: "The reason is this Congress came to power after the
1994 elections because in critical races the people who voted for more modest
things like the Brady Bill, which the polls showed the voters support, got
beat."Gibson: "But hasn't the NRA won the debate at that point? Once we
say it's politically impossible, we can't do it, we won't propose it, hasn't
the NRA basically framed the debate at that point?"- From Good Morning America's live interview with Bill Clinton at the White House, June 4.

ABC Has More Money Than MRC: Is That
Democracy?

"A political science professor
at the University of California-San Diego says, If he didn't have any money,
he'd be considered a crackpot. The money being spent on these ads, because you
can afford it and other candidates can't, is that democracy?"- Diane Sawyer to Steve Forbes,
June 1 Good Morning America.

Child Advocate vs. Autocrat

"You say she's gonna be a
terrible candidate. Everybody who knows Hillary Clinton or has heard her talk
say she's smart, she's quick, she's committed, she stands for something,
children among them. That she would be a formidable candidate..."

"I'm gonna bring you back to
Giuliani again. There are lots of folks who say he's an autocrat, he's worn
out his welcome, and he might play in certain parts of New York City but he
won't play elsewhere in the state."- CNNWashington Bureau
Chief Frank Sesno interviewing New York City columnist Jimmy Breslin, May 26 Inside
Politics.

"Extremists" Threaten U.S.,
China

"Now the danger is that Clinton's implacable critics, armed with the Cox Report, will vent their outrage on
the entire Sino-American relationship....Whether China chooses to exploit the
secrets it has already stolen to embark on a superpower arms race may depend
on how Washington manages this dangerous rift. The Cox Report offers a stark
warning. If we get hostile, they will get hostile. If both China and the U.S.
give in to extremists in their capitals and let their relationship unravel,
the worst-case scenario the report presents just might come true."- Time Senior Foreign
Correspondent Johanna McGeary, June 7.

"There's no question that Li Peng, probably the Jesse Helms of the
Chinese leadership, if we can look for an analogy. They have their
nationalists that don't want this intrusive relationship with the United
States, that don't want more Internet, that don't want more integration, that
don't want more American students and don't want something like the World
Trade Organization agreement that will bring rules into a system where corrupt
authoritarians now have a free hand."- New York Times columnist
and former reporter Thomas Friedman on PBS's Washington Week in Review,
May 28.

The "Gun Lobby" as Bully

"It's always interesting to
watch the Senate and the House when they win over a powerful lobby, not just
this lobby but any particular lobby. Once the dust settles you see people that
seem a little surprised that they were able to do it. It's like when a bunch
of kids gang up on the bully on the school play ground, they're always a
little surprised when they're able to back him down."- CBS's Bob Schieffer on
Sunday Morning, May 23.

Jesse "The Body" Throws
Matt Lauer Out of the Ring

Today co-host Matt Lauer: "Do
you think people carrying concealed weapons might make a difference?"Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura: "Licensed. I think that certainly in
a reality situation that, like take, for example, what happened here on the
subway in New York a few years back. Well, what are you going to do, I'll ask
you Matt, when someone's on a rampage and cares not about human life and is
just systematically assassinating people. Are you gonna stop 'em with
words?"Lauer: "I guess it's always good at that point to have a gun
around you. But my fear is if they're carrying a concealed weapon, what
happens when they go off the deep end?"- Exchange on NBC's Today, June
2.

Get Rid of Liberal PBS Analysis

"Get rid of the guns. We had the
Second Amendment that said you have the right to bear arms. I haven't seen the
British really coming by my house looking for it. And besides, the right to
bear arms is not an absolute right anyway, as New York's Sullivan Law proves.
We talk about ourselves as a violent society, and some of that is right and
some of it is claptrap. But I think if you took away the guns, and I mean
really take away the guns, not what Congress is doing now, you would see that
violent society diminish considerably."- PBS NewsHour essayist
Roger Rosenblatt, May 20.

CNN: Chinagate Overcovered

"On Tuesday, the House committee
report completed back in January was finally released on Capitol Hill after
months of wrangling over its declassification. A big story for the media,
right? All over the front pages and the airwaves....Reporters don't have a
crystal ball, of course. They've got something better: the leakers who have
been feeding them details about this report for months. Even Chris Cox turned
up on several networks last week spilling the details days before his
committee's work was made public....So have the media been used to prolong,
perhaps even hype the story?"- Washington Post media
reporter Howard Kurtz introducing a segment on CNN's Reliable Sources,
May 29.

vs.

"We have agreed on this program,
that at least on television, Chinagate has not been covered very much...Might
the release of the Cox Report be a turning point? Is this story going to get
the kind of coverage that at least we here all think it should have gotten all
along?"- FNC's Eric Burns on Fox
Newswatch, same night.

Bias Discovered....on Fox

"You have your choice these days
on cable: You can have your news beaten to death by MSNBC (which seems
incapable of thinking about more than one story at a time) or twisted beyond
all recognition by Fox, a network where truth bends to the right."- USA Today TV writer
Robert Bianco, May 28.

Right, But Jerks of the Century

"Whittaker Chambers was mostly
right about communism and Alger Hiss, but he was a nasty piece of work and
nobody likes a snitch. Even Joe McCarthy may have been on to something, but he
was a crude and cruel man who ruined people's lives for 48-point type. You
might call this the When Bad People Spoil Good Things school of history."- Time's Richard Stengel
on "Dubious Influences," June 14 issue.

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